Hannity: I Never Suggested Obama Was Muslim

Fox News host Sean Hannity said in a Playboy interview published Wednesday that he never helped propagate the conservative conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim.

“I never fueled the myth,” he said. “How do you come up with this stuff? He did go to a Muslim school. He writes about it in his own book.”

“He did not grow up in Kenya,” the interviewer responded.

“He went to a Muslim school in Indonesia, or wherever it was, Kenya. I forget,” Hannity said. “Now you’ve got me. I think it was Indonesia. I’m trying to remember his biography. It’s going back so long. He admits he went to a Muslim school. It’s on his audiobook, if you want a tape of it—you can hear him say it himself.”

He added: “I’m a Christian. All people are the children of God. I’m just telling you what Obama said in his own words. He didn’t go to a madrassa, which has negative connotations, but he did study the Koran and Islam and learn prayers that he could recite with a perfect accent, according to Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times. As for the issue of his birth certificate, I thought that was one of the oddest things, a noncontroversy that the White House easily could have ended but didn’t. If you’ve got the birth certificate, just release it and move on. That’s what I said.”

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Igor Bobic is the assistant editor of Talking Points Memo, helping oversee the site’s coverage of politics and policy in Washington. While originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Igor feels best at home on the beaches of Southern California. He can be reached at igor@talkingpointsmemo.com.